Freefall (The Indigo Lounge Series, #5)

by Zara Cox

To his newest employee, daughter Allegra:

  No sleeping with the footballers or you will be sacked.

  To his star striker, Gabriel Morgan:

  Lay one hand on my daughter and you will be sold.

  Two simple rules...

  How long will it take for them to be broken and who will crack first?

  First Chapter of One on One

  by Lexy Lockhart

  CHAPTER ONE

  “If I find out any of you filthy fuckers have laid even uno hand on my daughter, I’ll personally castrate you.” Westchester United’s Argentinian chairman, Hugo Alvarez, looked at his assembled squad, his eyes eventually resting on Gabriel Morgan. “And then I’ll sell you. To the worst team in the shittiest football league I can find. And that’s a promise.”

  Gabe met his eyes and took the overly protective father death stare as his due. He wasn’t ashamed of his reputation. As a single man he promised nothing to no one and made sure anyone he was involved with knew the rules. Recently several kiss and tell stories had hit the media. Then there was the picture of him naked and asleep in a bed that wasn’t his own that had been re-tweeted over 10,000 times. If he ever had a daughter, he’d make damn sure she didn’t go near a man like him.

  Unfortunately, the chairman’s warning had piqued his interest. He wished it hadn’t, but it had. Did Hugo Alvarez even have a daughter worth fucking?

  He waited until the chairman moved his attention elsewhere before slipping out the door of the changing room. Taking the stairs two at a time, he resolved to be back before they even realised he was missing.

  Plush midnight blue carpet soaked up the sound of his approach to her office. The plaque on the door read Finance Director. Long, dark hair hung down her back. A sack would probably be more flattering than the modest dark suit she wore. The jacket hung low over her backside, giving no clue as to what was underneath.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Definitely not his type. He preferred more obvious women, those who knew what they were getting into and understood the rules. The chairman’s daughter didn’t look as though she even knew there were rules.

  She turned, as though sensing his scrutiny. Heat slammed into Gabe’s body. Her make-up was minimal. Only a clear, shiny lip gloss decorated bee stung lips but she didn’t need anything else. Her body screamed 1940s sex symbol despite her attempts to cover it in an over-sized, unflattering suit.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice dripped over him like warm honey.

  “I’m Gabriel Morgan. Westchester’s star striker. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

  “No.” She peered at him for a moment over dark framed glasses. “I don’t watch football.”

  “Have you been in England long?”

  “Long enough to know I don’t like the weather. I’m very busy, Mr...” She removed papers from the filing cabinet in front of her without looking back at him.

  This didn’t happen to him. Even before he’d signed a professional football contract, women didn’t reject him. They always looked at him when he spoke. He moved further into the room and rested his backside on the corner of her desk.

  “I’m Gabe.” He held his hand towards her. “Shall we start again? It’s very nice to meet you.”

  Hesitatingly she stepped towards him and put her hand out to meet his. “I am Allegra.”

  Her accented English was killing him. He wanted to unbutton her suit, and her attitude, and hear her whispering naughty things into his ear.

  “My father...” she darted a look at the door then back at him.

  “Is downstairs talking to the rest of the squad.”

  “Shouldn’t you be down there too?” For the first time, she looked at him, really looked at him.

  “I should, yes.”

  “You’re not afraid of what he will do if he finds you missing?” Gabe diagnosed her reluctance to talk to him. Daddy complex.

  He inclined his head. “He could fine me.”

  “You don’t mind losing your wages?” Allegra sat back at her desk, pushing her chair as far away from him as she could. She picked up a pen, turning it over and over in her fingers.

  “I think if you know the right people, fines are not an issue.”

  She smiled and his gut tightened. The transformation when she smiled and forgot to be shy was stunning.

  “You think knowing the right people will stop a fine from happening?”

  He grinned, leaning forward. “I’d hope if I was friends with the right person they’d forget to take the fine from my wages.”

  “And why would someone risk their job and do that?”

  Gabe shrugged. “My boyish charm?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You have quite the opinion of yourself, Mr Morgan.”

  “Gabe,” he corrected.

  “Gabe,” she repeated, a slight breathlessness in her voice the only sign he was getting to her—that he had any effect on her at all.

  This was usually the time he went in for the kill. But she was different. Allegra wasn’t going to fall for any of his usual lines and land neatly in his lap.

  He leaned forward, not far enough to invade her space but closer. “Sometimes a fine is worth taking.”

  “You’d take a fine for talking to me?”

  “I’m not sure what the punishment for talking to you would be.” Gabe slid off the desk. “Your father only mentioned touching you.”

  Gabe lowered his voice deliberately, the last two words spoken in a hushed, intimate tone that brought color to Allegra’s face.

  She crossed her legs. “And what was the punishment for that?”

  Gabe shrugged as though it didn’t matter to him. “He said he’d sell whoever dared to touch you.”

  “Really?” She uncrossed her legs. “And is that something you would risk?”

  He should’ve stayed where he was. On the desk. Or even better, over near the door. Belatedly he realised his groin was in her direct eye line. If she moved her legs one more time, he didn’t know if he could resist reaching out and running a hand over her plain skirt. He needed to know whether she wore tights or stockings.

  The latter would fit much better with the naughty librarian fantasy he had going on. Ugly clothes, glasses, hair tied at the nape of her neck. His eyes travelled down the rest of her body. How had he missed those shoes?

  She’d stood behind her desk, then sat in her chair, feet hidden from view. Now he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the serious fuck-me red stilettos on her feet.

  Allegra re-crossed her legs, one foot bouncing up and down in an impatient gesture.

  She’d asked him something.

  “Um...risk?” He stumbled over his words. Real smooth.

  “Yes, would you risk being sold because you touched me?”

  She copied his inflection on the last two words of her sentence.

  “Too fucking right I would.” He spoke before he engaged his brain.

  No fucking way.

  He couldn’t afford to be sold out of the English Premier League. Not this year. He didn’t have too many years left playing football at the highest level. If he wanted to eclipse his father’s achievements, he needed to win the FA Cup. Nothing else would suffice.

  Then he could stand over his father’s grave and gloat.

  The man who had sired him had been cruel and dismissive of his talents, never one to encourage his only child. Too preoccupied with the waning of his own career to support his son’s fledgling one.

  Maybe gloat was too strong a word. Be quietly proud he’d achieved what his father hadn’t. That sounded much more reasonable.

  Except that was bullshit.

  Hate for his father and what he’d done to his mother had driven Gabe through years of working harder and longer than anyone else.

  When his team-mates finished training and went home, he stayed at the training ground practicing. At one time or another he’d convinced every goalkeeper at the club and employees from the groundsman to program sellers to stand in the goal so he
could practice shooting and taking penalties.

  He was sick of the media suggesting he’d got where he was because he was Joey Morgan’s son. His father might’ve been the darling of the English football team for years, but Gabe knew who he really was. The man who’d reduced his mother to a shadow of her former self. A cruel man who cared only about himself.

  Allegra put her hands on the desk and used it to shove her chair further back. Getting to her feet, she went back over to the filing cabinet and opened a drawer.

  “Then we’d better ensure we don’t let that happen. We can’t have my father forced into selling his most prized asset.”

  She did know who he was.

  The knowledge didn’t improve his sour mood. Thinking about his father was never a good idea. Fortunately he had his very favourite thing in front of him. The one thing guaranteed to shove thoughts of his less than ideal childhood to the back of his mind.

  Gabe allowed his gaze to travel the length of her legs, take in her shoes before lazily roaming its way back up her body to her face. He wanted to see her in nothing but those shoes.

  He’d have to work hard if he wanted her in his bed. And he did. His stiff cock told him so. She’d be the first challenge he’d had in years.

  #

  Weak English sunshine bathed the pitch in a glow of pale light as Westchester United played their first game of the season. Allegra watched the game from the comfort of the directors’ box, insulated from the noise of the fans and the excitement of thousands of passionate supporters.

  She’d told Gabe she didn’t watch football and that had been the truth. However, her father had a new rule this season. Every member of his staff had to be present for each home match. No exceptions.

  Allegra could think of a dozen other things she’d rather do. Spreadsheets needed updating, data had to be collated, new systems introduced.

  It wasn’t that the previous Finance Director hadn’t performed well. Allegra had to be better. No, not better. The best. The best her father had ever seen.

  Sitting through a dreary game of football had definitely not been on her to-do list, but as the game started her gaze was drawn to one player.

  Gabe.

  The previous day, she’d done her best to hide her reaction to him. Of course she’d known who he was. A person didn’t need to know a thing about football to be aware of who Gabriel Morgan was. His off-field exploits were legendary.

  When he’d spoken to her, his voice exuded sexual promise. Not that she wanted him to make good on that, quite the opposite. Since her younger brother’s death, her father had needed someone to leave his empire to. She wanted to be that person despite his archaic views on women in business.

  Particularly the football business.

  He believed too many women around a football club would distract the players from their focus. He could just about accept that women were needed as office staff, in the cafeteria and to clean. But in positions of power and responsibility? She’d spent the best part of the entire year he’d owned Westchester United begging him to allow her to use her degree and prove him wrong.

  A woman could work in a high profile career in a football club without having to sleep with the players. Or, as her father put it, allow herself to be fucked by them.

  The game ended. Allegra made her way to the executive lounge. After one drink she could escape to her office and catch up on some work before Monday morning. Surely her father wouldn’t expect her to hang around any longer than that?

  Allegra sat in a corner, nursed her drink and waited for her father to arrive and effectively dismiss her. She told herself she didn’t need that, didn’t need his permission. But she did. If she wanted him to see her as she knew she was—a smart, professional, hard-working employee he could rely on, he had to see her there.

  “Can I sit here?”

  His voice flowed over her. Deep, melodic and warm enough to light a fire in her belly.

  She swept an arm out in front of her. “I think there are lots of other seats.”

  He shrugged. “None I’d like to sit on.”

  Gabe didn’t wait for a definitive answer before he sat. She supposed he was so used to getting his own way, it wouldn’t really matter what her response would have been.

  He must’ve had the quickest shower in history. Allegra tried to pull her mind away from dangerous thoughts of water cascading over Gabe’s naked body. It’d be easier if he didn’t smell so fucking delicious.

  “Gabriel, what do you want?”

  He leaned forward and put out his hand. For one awful, heart-stopping moment she thought he was going to touch her...right there in the executive lounge in front of...well, everyone except her father.

  Picking up the lanyard around her neck, he examined the picture on her security badge.

  “Nice.”

  Actually, it wasn’t. As with most pictures taken by computers her skin was leeched of any color, she looked as though she could carry a whole family’s luggage in the bags under her eyes, and worst of all she still wore her glasses.

  She grabbed his picture. Annoyingly he looked healthy, vibrant and sexier than anyone on a stupid bit of laminated paper deserved to. Dropping it back against his chest, she leaned back in her seat.

  His Westchester United polo shirt hugged his biceps. A tribal tattoo snaked out of his left sleeve and caressed its way down olive skin to his elbow. Words she couldn’t see properly swirled in black ink on the inside of his right forearm.

  Tattoos had never been her thing. They did nothing for her. Yet now, all she wanted to do was trace a finger over his tattoo, following it up where it disappeared beneath his top. Hell it probably had nothing to do with whatever it was he had written on his skin. She simply wanted to touch him.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and pinned him with her best stare. “My father wouldn’t like to find you here talking to me.”

  “I don’t care what your father would like.” The quick glance he shot around the room showed his words to be a lie.

  His gaze seemed to burn into her, as though he could see what she wore under her very sensible black jeans and oversized Westchester training top. Her skin heated and she shifted uncomfortably.

  “I understand he has a team picked out for you in deepest Russia if you displease him?”

  “He wouldn’t sell me.” Gabe picked up her drink and took a sip of the dark red Merlot. “The fans would be in uproar.”

  “I think he cares more about his business than he does the fans.”

  “And not about you?”

  “Of course he cares about me,” Allegra corrected. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have issued his warning.”

  He studied her. “You think your father cares more about the club—his business—than he does about you?”

  “That’s not what I said.” She hoped he emphatic delivery of her words would convince him. Her eyes strayed to the glass he’d touched. Her drink. That he’d helped himself to.

  “You mentioned the club before yourself.” He leaned forward again. “I know how that feels.”

  Confused, she could read the pain in his eyes but didn’t understand. “What?”

  “To have a father who cares more about the game than his flesh and blood.” His voice was low, as though telling her a secret.

  She didn’t want to have anything in common with Gabe, she certainly didn’t want to feel sorry for him. Actually she’d prefer it if she didn’t have any emotions towards him at all.

  “My father cares only about counting his cash.”

  “And not you?” he repeated.

  “Certainly about me. I am his family.”

  Still his eyes didn’t leave hers.

  Allegra squirmed under his scrutiny, wishing she’d thought to wear a thinner top underneath the bulky, overly-warm training top. Taking off clothes, even outer-wear, wouldn’t be the best decision she ever made.

  He’d taken a taste of her wine to un-nerve her. Well she damn well wasn’t going to le
t him. Two could play at his game.

  Allegra picked up her wine glass and swirled the contents round. Dark red liquid sloshed perilously close to the rim. Her hands were shaking, she wished he didn’t make her so nervous. She licked her lips and watched his blue eyes darken, his pupils expand as his gaze focused on her tongue.

  Draining the Merlot, she put the glass back on the table between them. The sounds of the room died down and all she could hear was her own breathing.

  “Allegra...”

  “It’s time for me to leave. I need to work for a few hours...”

  “Don’t leave yet.” He reached out and put a hand on her arm.

  Her breath caught in her throat as zings of pleasure ricocheted through her body and settled in her core. He hadn’t even touched a remotely erogenous zone yet her body reacted as though he’d placed his hand inside her knickers.

  “Why?” She hated that her voice trembled and he would know how affected she was by his touch.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  #

  “A business proposition,” he clarified.

  “Business?” She shook her head, as though having trouble concentrating on his rapid turn of conversation.

  “I need your help.” It was always best to get straight to the point. Too much time in her presence made his groin more than a little uncomfortable. Especially when her pink tongue flicked out to lick her lips.

  “With?” She dropped her gaze to the table.

  Irrational irritation threaded its way through Gabe. He didn’t want her to be attracted to him, it would make his proposal more difficult. But he didn’t want her to be oblivious to him either. That would just be wrong.

  “I’ve been asked to be the spearhead of a charity,”

  Cautiously, she looked up. The ugly glasses she wore added to his ‘Allegra fantasy’—the one where she threw off her spectacles, over-sized-cover-everything clothes and lay on her desk in nothing but red fuck-me stilettos and lacy underwear begging him to lock her office door and bring her to a screaming orgasm.

  Yeah, he’d thought about this way too much.

  He needed to go out and get laid. Pure and simple.

  “What charity?”

  Gabe dragged his attention back to the conversation he’d started and away from wondering whether she shaved her bush.